


A Touch of Scandal

by gwenchoco



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenchoco/pseuds/gwenchoco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack gets pulled into a case of Phryne's, and his reputation may never be quite the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Touch of Scandal

Phryne Fisher/ Jack Robinson

Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries, Original author of books Kerry Greenwood

No spoilers, the characters are borrowed and the setting is mine.Characters are borrowed from the TV version. Set in the as yet unreleased season 2. 

Rated PG

A Touch of Scandal

The thief jumped out the second story window, rolled and began running away from the ball. Clad in black evening dress he quickly started to fade into the dark countryside.Phyrne reached down and pulled off a pair of sparkling burgundy high heeled slippers and launched herself out the double windows after him. Jack swore quietly under his breath and gave chase. Really he would have preferred to use the stairs than risk a broken leg. He had had one before and they hurt. 

He managed to land, roll and regain his feet quickly, but paused to pull Phryne up out of a confusion of skirt layers before giving chase.Already the thief had crossed the expanse of lawn and was but a dark blur in the night. Soon enfolding trees and rough terrain better known to their quarry would lose this race for them. He reached down found the flesh of her arm and heaved her up onto her feet.He had thought a Victorian themed ball gown would cover considerably more flesh than this one seemed to.

It was true her ankles were lost in folds of velvet and silk but the delicate collarbone and soft shoulders revealed by her scalloped neckline had quite taken his breath away earlier in the night when she arrived at the station to request his assistance.Whether it had been her beauty or his sense of duty that made him choose to accompany her was not a question he cared to address. He had allowed himself to be convinced to change into black tie formal wear and accompanied her to the ball where they hunted a jewel thief and waltzed among the rich and famous. 

He dashed after the man, and found to his surprise that he was soon alone.Phryne had stumbled to her knees and was gasping for air like a beached fish. He hesitated; weighing leaving her behind verses his best chance for capture of the thief. 

“I know where he is going,” she gasped.“Help me with this thing.” She was attempting to reach behind herself, trying but failing to undo the tight corset ribbons that bound her waist. “How did women live like this?” 

He stepped behind her and pulled loose the bow at her waist but was dismayed to find knotted stitched ribbon beneath.“I think Dot sewed you in.I would have to cut it.”

He saw a flash of pale silken leg and then was handed her small pearly handled knife. “Cut !” she demanded breathlessly.He regarded the tight lacing up twining up her back. The tight cording lay almost flat against a tiny ribbon of exposed skin. Quickly and carefully he sliced through the burgundy ribbon and started pulling the whale-boned corseted dress apart and her impossible, unhealthily tiny waist expanded as she gulped air. He stopped as he realized he was running out of dress to keep about her shoulders and as yet he had found nothing underneath.

“Never again,” she pronounced, as she started forward.

“Wait I didn’t tie it off Phryne,” he called out to no avail. Sighing he gave chase again, now with a much more fleet footed accomplice.They tore through light brush and between rows of trees, Jack following Phryne now, as she had a direction in mind. Bushes and vines tore at them but they stopped for nothing. Well Jack stopped once, when twenty feet in front of him he saw Phryne caught momentarily in some bracken lose the burgundy velvet dress entirely.She simply pulled out of it and kept running clad only in fluffy red silken petticoats.He ran on too, nearly catching her up as a harsh stony path slowed her. 

Ahead he saw a glistening flicker of moonlight on water.The river, and no doubt some sort of boat arranged as an emergency escape route was just below them now, down a slight embankment. 

He saw the man they chased turn, saw the flash of steel in his palm as the man focused on Phryne, Phryne whose luminescent white skin would stand out in the moonlight. 

“Phryne get down!” he ordered and shot at the man using the reflecting metal as his target in the dark.A cry of pain at his second shot told him he had met his mark. 

He tossed Phryne his jacket and stumbled down the bank, secretly sickened to know he had shot another man, wondering whether he lived or died, though not regretting his choice. He found the man crumpled on the river bank, easier to see in the cleared space.His bullet had entered the man’s upper shoulder.He took one look at Phryne as she entered the clearing still slipping her arm into the sleeve of his coat. It would burn in his memory but he never spoke of it, then or ever afterwards. He focused on removing his own bow tie, shoving his cufflinks in his pocket and simply ripping his shirt buttons free.The shirt became a wound dressing on their impromptu field of battle, and he applied pressure to the blood pumping from the man’s wounded shoulder.“By the way, you’re under arrest,” he told the man.Phyrne laughed. 

Back at the house he sat on a small satin stool beside the phone, giving orders to the South Street Station. He noted he had gotten a blood smear on the pale blue silk of the stool. Half a dozen men and several women from the house had poured down upon them at the riverbank from the party arriving perhaps six or seven minutes after them.One had even been a young doctor, and assisted tending the thief’s wounds.Phryne had removed a diamond necklace from the thief’s pocket as well as an assortment of jeweled earrings. Now Phryne stood beside Jack in the hall, managing to look sartorially elegant in his evening jacket with the sleeves rolled up, and the dark crimson puff of her silken underskirts below. She watched a trio of young girls passed by giggling impishly.Phryne nipped lightly on her lower lip and glanced delicately at Jack. 

“I’m afraid you’re causing something of a scandal,” she said. 

“I am?” He asked, eyebrows rising.It was true he wore only a blood smeared undershirt with his dress pants but he knew quite clearly what she wasn’t wearing under his jacket. 

“Well Jack, it’s not just that you’re a little underdressed, it’s that you wear it so well.Girls like that have rarely seen so much of a real man.”Somehow her voice lightly emphasised the “real” in her sentence, and also made him feel the state of his undress.It also made him glad he still made time every week to work out at the policeman’s association club rooms. 

“Of course carrying me back made for a rather dramatic entrance too.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have walked back. Your feet are quite ravaged. You should have the doctor look at them,” he excused.

“I rather fear that the account of this escapade will grow in the retelling far beyond reality.”

“Reality would be scandalous enough I should think should anyone ever hear it.”

“Not planning a complete report then Jack?” she asked impishly. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable and wished the butler would come with the shirt he had been promised.He felt himself begin to blush and inwardly cursed the tendency.

“I fear finding the discarded remnants of my dress along with your own dishabille and people’s unfortunate tendency to melodramatics and, ehm,” she cleared her throat delicately, “romance will lead to stories that would make even me blush.Penny dreadfuls have a lot to answer for when it comes to people’s lurid imaginings these days.”

Jack looked up at her in alarm. “What? How could anyone think we had time for torrid romance during that harebrained chase that nearly got you killed?” His mind took hold of the thought and gave it a twist, instantly spinning out the tale in his imagination.(Fingers brushing her hot skin as he pulled the corset apart .....Her moonlit skin on the riverbank enticing him; his lips chasing down her collarbone and plunging down following eternal instinct. Him pulling her into his daring embrace and their lips joining hungrily.....) He blushed scarlet and partially hid his face from her under the guise of rubbing his brow. 

The butler arrived with a white shirt and black jacket. 

“Finally,” he muttered. “Sorry, thank you.” He managed to redeem himself before the affronted man left.He slipped the shirt on over his shoulders and found himself awkwardly trying to do up buttons under her gaze. She turned away and stared down a peering matron in yellow silk and jewels that had paused to look at a man dressing in the hall.The woman harrumphed and moved on.“Young people these days,” she could be heard to say in the next room. Phryne tried to smother a laugh. 

“No one will ever take me seriously again,” murmured Jack.

“Nonsense. You are going to be invited to many of the best parties, and even more interesting, all the worst ones as well. That’s how things happen in these “upper echelons of society.” You’ve probably done more for your career in one night than in years of solid police work. I know that’s terribly unfair but it’s no less true. The one thing better than honest fame in is a touch of roguish scandal, especially if you look very good when you’re caught in it.”

He muddled his tie.“Here let me fix that,” she said, “there’s a photographer around here somewhere and he will surely want your picture for the papers.” And that was exactly the photo the photographer got, both half turned to the camera and her adjusting his tie. Jack felt very fortunate that he had enough pull with the paper’s editor to insist on a formal photo being used, and it was a formal shot taken in front of the station that appeared the next day, alongside his slightly vague account of events. 

Phyrne stopped by his office in the afternoon. She wore a very demure afternoon frock in soft green cotton layered with chiffon. She gave him a check, insisting on sharing the payment of her client especially as his suit had been ruined. She also presented him with a print of the original photo.Seeing it clearly printed and enlarged gave him a small shock. The photo was intimate, they stood close, his hair rumpled, his shirt untucked. There was a hint of a saucy smile around her lips and from the photo alone you couldn’t tell whether she was tying or un-tying his tie. 

“I think we should endeavour to get the plate for this photo,” was all he said. 

“Already done, Detective Inspector Robinson,” she replied with a smile as she swished out the door. She popped her head back inside momentarily. “And I’m keeping it as a memento,” she finished with an irrepressible grin. 

**Author's Note:**

> ( First posting on this site, apologies if there are posting errors. Also posted on Livejournal)


End file.
